Things I dislike about this year in WIMWI

The year in WIMWI has been one of the more interesting years in my life. The 100th post will be devoted to exploring some of the many nice experiences I have had here. Let the 99th be used to vent some frustration.

I came in here with a set of expectations - that I would find little stimulating in the studies here, that I would have very involved discussions of business, politics and current and historical affairs with my classmates and that I would continue to improve my social skills.

By and large my expectations have been met, so I am quite satisfied with the way the year's turned out. My expectations about MBA studies being mostly superficial or trivial were largely met, though courses like HR and even accounts were more useful than I'd imagined they would be.

On my second expectation, I was sorely disappointed. The engrossing and heated discussions I used to have in my engineering college, sitting with my classmates in that cramped balcony we called Titanic - I really miss them. Still remember the shouting match we had got into about Gandhi that night in Alibaug :) Everyone here is so incredibly smart, yet no one seems to want to argue over their political positions or pass judgement on historical personalities or fight over the effect of religion on society.

My social skills have continued improving, or so I believe. Maybe in a few years, I might just enter the category of the socially competent :) Or maybe I won't - don't overly care about that. But my friendships have improved - both with older friends and with newer ones I made here. Probably due to a conscious choice a few years ago to be more open about myself, atleast with my inner circle of friends.

So, to the main topic now. Things I dislike about this year in WIMWI.

The utter lack of political discussion. Maybe it's because of the group I find myself in, but the lack of discussions and arguments really is a very disappointing waste of time. In addition, I myself lost touch with newspapers and TV bulletins and couldn't read too many books, which resulted into complete stagnation of my knowledge about the world of news. Learnt more about the business world, thanks to the hundreds of cases we went through, but even here there were few discussions of the latest happenings in the corporate world. I myself have dropped the ball recently. I better pick it up again and remain mentally equiped to take up my interests again.

My inability to read. As I mentioned before, my reading habit was drastically affected by the lack of time and my own inefficiencies. I am a very slow reader, and require long stretches of free time (many hours together) to be able to do justice to the kind of material I like to read. These stretches were not available in the first two terms. In the third term, more time was freed up, but I chose to use it to enjoy the company of friends. Don't think that it was a wrong choice at all, but if only I had been a bit more efficient, I could have managed to read more. Instead I have ended up with a backlog of 5-6 books to read.

The constant presentations. I hated making presentations so very often, especially in the last term. The sheer volume meant that we could hardly prepare really well for most of them. If only we had fewer presentations to make, we would have worked harder on each, and yet enjoyed more spare time to pursue other enjoyable pursuits.

The lack of breaks. In engineering, except for the ten days before final submissions and the two weeks before end-terms, the rest of the term very relaxed and we could whatever we wanted. In such a free atmosphere, I could take up activities like learning German, trading on the markets, etc, while still having all the time in the world to watch TV all day or read long articles in newspapers and news websites. If we had a week long break, perhaps after each set of midterms, it would have been personally more of a "value-add" than sitting in class day after day after day, just waiting for the Saturday to come.

The cribs. I'm not sure, but students here seem to complain more than what I saw in my previous colleges. It's clearly ironic to post this in an entry where I myself am cribbing, but this is only a sign that the cribbing culture has gotten to me as well. People complain about everything - from the food in the mess to the courses and professors to nature of the grass in LKP (okay, not the last one - but things are not far away from that point).

Often I wonder why some of the most privileged and accomplished young adults in India should be or should seem to be so unhappy. I clearly understand where I would have been had I not been here - making not-very-good-money doing programming (something I don't like, though of course many others do). Recalling that fact makes most other issues seem completely worthless worrying about. Add to that the wonderful friends I have here, and life really couldn't be much rosier :)

Well, it could... and that brings me to the thing I most dislike about this year in WIMWI, but that's for a more private diary :)